Hiking Mt Olympus in Winter

We still haven't been out skiing this season - the snowpack in the Wasatch is very shallow right now, and we have no interest in destroying our skis (or breaking our bones) on rocks. But today we had the urge to get up in the mountains, so we decided to hike up Mt Olympus. We can see this mountain from our living room, yet still haven't been to the summit in the 1.5 years we've lived in SLC. Mt Olympus is an iconic Utah peak - it has a wilderness area named after it - and despite only topping out at 9,000 feet, it towers 5,000 feet above the SLC valley. There are a handful of cool ski descent options (in the springtime). Today we hiked up the standard Olympus trail, climbing 4200 feet over 3.5 miles. The upper third of the trail was packed snow/ice, and microspikes were very helpful. The final couple hundred feet has some fun class 3 scrambling.

It was a nice little change of pace from running. We've bounced back pretty quickly from Philly - I've run 100+ miles each of the past two weeks... and Andrea is starting to feel back to her old self as well.

Some photos from the hike (and some other randoms from the weekend) below...

Andrea hiking up the upper half of the trail. Down low, it was dry.

Looking south from the saddle

Scrambling up the gully

Broads Fork Twin Peaks and Stairs Gulch

You can see that the valley is starting to get inverted

Andrea near the top

Summit shot, looking towards Big Cottonwood Canyon

No snow on the south facing areas in lower Millcreek

Heading back down

Microspikes were crucial on the descent!

Inversion - YUCK!

I won this giant martini glass at my department's Christmas party last night. Should make a good ice cream bowl.

Yes, once every year or two we wear something other than running / skiing / hiking clothes...

...but on those occasions, we are always excited to change back into our normal clothes (ie. giant fuzzy fleece robes!)